Guild Wars 2

Greatsword
Dusk Strike/Fading Twilight/Chilling Scythe – This chain currently takes 3 seconds per cycle, with only a 1.5s base chill at the end. So even with heavy investment, far beyond what you can get anywhere but WvW/PvE with food, just auto-attacking (which you never want to do) can’t keep up perma chill even in ideal situations. I have a few suggestions to fix this problem, but I’ll get to that after I bring something else up first.

To make a comparison, Guardian Hammer and Reaper GS are both slow weapons. They also do nearly the same damage for a full chain when you only consider what they do on hit with the same power and no traiting. The difference however (besides profession differences) is that Guardian’s Hammer leaves a symbol, creating a combo field, providing protection, and also adding significant damage, while Reaper GS only gets 1.5s of chill. This means in a comparison between two weapons that are otherwise similar, 1.5s of chill and a faster AS is being “valued” the same as a 2 second light field symbol which adds around 50% damage over its duration and gives protection. I think this really highlights how much Reaper GS underperforms for its attack speed, and that it needs to be adjusted to be more appropriately rewarding for landing the third hit, like Guardian Hammer.

I’d like to propose two different solutions, these are separate, and depend on whether it is more important that GS AA remain slow and powerful, or be a bit faster but not as strong.

1. Reduce the chain to 2.7s and increase the chill to 2s. It would still be slower and less DPS than dagger, but with chill not LF. This makes it much better to actually land, and feel rewarding when you do. With a 2s base chill, it is possible to technically perma chill with AA once you have 35% chill duration. It is worth noting that while perma chill sounds strong, you’d never actually be auto attacking that often, nor would an enemy allow that to happen.
2. Leave the current skill in every way, only instead of a simple chill at the end, replace the chill with a 2s ice field that deals a bit of damage each pulse, and adjust the overall chill given, if possible to be 0.5s per pulse of the field (3 pulses overall), and 0.5s on hit, for a total of 2s. This requires both 50% chill duration and the enemy standing in the field to get 100% chill uptime, but leaving an ice field allows for more use of finishers, like Gravedigger.

The first option is simple, doesn’t change much just makes the chain better to use damage/chill wise. The second makes GS more like Hammer, which is a commonly used weapon with a really satisfying AA chain, but keeps it as a slow weapon while giving it a sufficient reward for landing the last hit. Final note, each hit should generate 2% LF or so, otherwise the weapon just doesn’t sustain well.

Gravedigger – A strong damage skill in theory, the windup is equivalent to Executioner’s Strike, but the reward for hitting the skill is severely lacking comparatively. Also, the reset brings it to 1s CD, a really awkward timing. Essentially, even if you get the reset you can’t just cast it again, yet casting just about anything else also takes too long, so it doesn’t flow well. Just a full reset would work much nicer, allowing for “spam” in the rare situation it would be usable, and at least in PvE allowing for high DPS under 50%. This might require a longer base CD which I’d rather have, as it is extremely unlikely you’ll want to use it every 5s anyway.

Also, while it lists similar damage to ES (RS5) in theory, one major problem is ES can be combined with Death Perception for nearly guaranteed crits against vulnerable targets, while Gravedigger can’t. This effectively gimps Gravedigger’s use as an execute quite heavily except in sets that invest heavily into crit chance, aka builds that will get sneezed on and die.

Death Spiral – Great skill, applies vuln which has a lot of synergy with Greatsword, Reaper’s Shroud, the Reaper traits and the profession as a whole. While a great skill if it hits, only issue is it could serve to be longer range/larger, maybe say a 300 range frontal cone, as it is now it is fairly difficult to actually use in combat. QoL issues aside, great skill.

Nightfall – Really nice skill, it has at least three obvious functions (dark field for combo, blind for defense, cripple for keeping people in), and has some nice synergy with say Chilling Darkness, though can only proc once. Only change I’d like to see here is a QoL change so that the aftercast is removed, just let me cast and go.

Grasping Darkness – Another cool skill, only problem is it shoots straight out from your character which is an awful targetting mechanism for this type of skill. Just have it work like other skills. Otherwise its fine.

Shouts
General: Shouts need to all act like NCSY, with a strong, desirable base effect that also scales in larger fights. Also, I really, really don’t think Rise! can work without new types of minions, and I think at least one of the shouts has to be a defensive measure at this point; Reaper still gets it really bad for not having any active defense, and shouts are a way for us to get a scaling active defense.

“Your soul is mine!” – I think this will be an uncommon opinion, but I think YSIM as a concept is fine, it just needs to be less bad in smaller fights without making it stronger in big fights. Also, why does it only have a 0.36 healing power scaling?

Suggested change is to give it 5% LF given baseline, with 3% per enemy hit, and a 1.0 healing power scaling, since only the base heal scales with healing power. Builds with high LF pools won’t have much healing power investment, but builds with high healing power won’t have high LF pools. This will give it the same LF if it hits 5 people, but with a better baseline heal.

“Nothing can save you!” – Amazing shout as is, don’t change a thing. This is the one shout that did not once leave my bar while playing power reaper.

“Rise!” – It can’t summon Jagged Horrors. The problem is Jagged Horrors are useless without Death Nova, and fill the exact same role as Bone Minions, but with a more passive “Putrid Explosion” (Death Nova), and while being objectively worse in every way except doing more upfront damage when you summon 5 of them, and synergy with Augery. I don’t think another minion could work either, none that we currently have.

My suggestion is give it a brand new type of minion that has some kind of passive benefit to the Necromancer, or change it completely. If you leave it as minions, maybe something that functions similar to spirits, or something that functions like Illusionary Defender, each one summoned would transfer X% of damage you take to itself. By transfering damage, the minions themselves would give you a scaling damage mitigation, but one that is balanced around the HP of the minions. It provides play/counterplay, as the summoner could try to keep them alive longer for more mitigation, but the enemy is also capable of killing them off directly.

“Suffer!” – Currently “Suffer” is directly worse than Plague Signet, and that is in the best situation. First thing I’d do is make it instant cast and a stun break, as it is primarily a defensive skill. This is the shout I’d like to see changed to a scaling defensive skill. Lower its damage to be the same as the other non-elite shouts, and give it an effect similar to Endure Pain, with 1.5s base that also gives 0.5s longer duration per person hit. Raise CD to 60s.

This makes “Suffer” a 2s damage immunity, 1 condition transfer, stun break, and light damage in a 1v1, but when you hit 5 targets that increases to 5 conditions transfered and 4s of damage immunity. This fits thematically, as horror villains aren’t pushovers that you can just turn around and focus.

“You are all weaklings!” – Good shout, I’d just like to see it give better base might, with less scaling. Similar change as with YSIM, 5 might baseline, with 3 might per person hit gives it the same 20 stack cap.

“Chilled to the bone!” – Great shout if it lands, however with a 2 second cast time good luck landing it. I’d like to see the cast time lowered to 1 seconds, like Supply Crate, and at least look at its CD. I’m not sure if 120s is warranted, but it is hard to know while it is still so difficult to use because of the 2s cast.

Traits
Shroud Knight – Generic “lets you use the specialization” trait, I just want to mention that the existance of this trait not giving any actual power on its own means the rest of the traits have to make up in their own way.

Augury of Death – I think this either needs to be 10% base with 5% per person hit (still 35% with 5 people hit, but only need to hit 2 to go even 20%), and/or needs a slight secondary effect. I think its a solid idea, increases the strength of shouts, but it has to compete with a very strong trait in Relentless Pursuit, and just about every CDR trait in the game gives more than just CDR.

Chilling Nova – I personally think on-crit traits are really unhealthy for the game, though I understand them. Either lower the CD to 10s, or tie it to Reaper’s Shroud, such as an on-entry and every X seconds while in Shroud type trait.

Relentless Pursuit – Great as is, makes it hard to slow down Reaper, love the trait, no need to touch it.

Shivers of Dread – I like this trait, but I want to point something out: Reaper itself, ignoring base Necromancer, has just one fear, with Terrify. In fact, many of my builds had not a single source of fear beyond Terrify and the off-chance of a corrupted stability. I feel like this might need something else, because unless you specific trait for it it does very little, and the chill itself is mainly used to synergize with chill traits and to keep the enemy close, it isn’t as much of a normally “functional” chill, because they are already hard-CCed. I think it might need a bit extra, an idea is chill on RS entry, or some other method of spreading chill out that benefits our builds more widely.

Soul Eater – With Greatsword being so mediocre right now its hard to say how good the life steal is on this. I would say that the CDR is very low however, you need to land Gravedigger twice to even make the CDR worth using, and even that requires a total of 7 people hit over 2 casts, which is just too much. I’d propose either making it a “boring” 20% CDR trait, giving a base CDR plus CDR per person hit by Gravedigger, or increase the CDR per person hit significantly.

Chilling Victory – Strong trait as is, I wouldn’t change a thing right now.

Decimate Defenses – Another really strong and fun trait, brings a lot of vuln synergy and allows you to technically be “tanky” but still have good damage. Maybe worth looking at this to be 1% damage per stack of vuln instead, same damage with no crit, more damage once you’d have maxed on crit, only really a DPS loss in builds that had ferocity and no crit. We’re kind of overloading on crit chance right now, so I think one of our sources should be a damage mod.

Cold Shoulder – I think this is underperforming a little, I thought the old version of it was fine, especially considering we effectively only get two minors.

Blighter’s Boon – Amazing trait, wouldn’t change a thing. It scales into teamfights effectively by allowing the boon use of allies to sustain you, yet in smaller fights it still has nice synergy, especially with Spite.

Deathly Chill – This is just so weak right now I don’t see it competing with the other traits here. Even condi builds could go Blighter’s Boon and gain the LF generation they really need, and if you have Dhuumfire Reaper’s Onslaught would also boost your Dhuumfire by 15%. This trait just doesn’t do enough, Under 50% HP we’re looking at basically 2 bleeds worth of damage, which is awful, just about every single condi trait in the game outperforms this one.

Reaper’s Onslaught – Seems like a great idea, currently bugged and doesn’t work at all.

Closing
Those are my thoughts on everything, having played quite a lot of Reaper Friday/Saturday on stream, and then spending most of Sunday writing this up and going in game to test not just Reaper but other professions to compare to. I’m sure this isn’t the end-all-be-all of feedback, but I really wanted to give the devs something that was direct, in depth, and covered everything the specialization gave. I’d also really like to thank Robert Gee and anyone else who worked on Reaper, it was easily the most fun I’ve had playing Necromancer in a long time, it reminded me of how fun the specialization rework was.

As always, feedback is welcome and encourage. Also I apologize for starting another thread, but I consider myself a bit of a special snowflake here.

“Infusing Terror/Terrify – Great skill, addresses some stability issues, at least while in shroud (still need stability), and the fear is still present, but at the cost of not being instant. I think its a fair trade off. Overall I wouldn’t touch this skill at all, just wanted to say it is a really cool skill, a ton of fun to use.”

I’d like this to become a stun breaker when foot in the grave is traited, allowing more stability based builds. Thoughts?

Dreaming serpent.5197:

I’d like this to become a stun breaker when foot in the grave is traited, allowing more stability based builds. Thoughts?

Its an interesting change for sure, if it was made I’d just have it apply to all shroud 3 skills. I’m not sure its needed though, Infusing Terror already makes you immune to any more incoming stuns for 8s, and entering DS w/ FitG would break stuns, so I’m not sure you’d need that extra reactive stunbreak when Infusing Terror can pre-empt the stun if you’re already in shroud.

Mhh there is actually nothing i can disagree with, infact it sums up nicely many thoughts i had about the reaper aswell.

About shievers of dread, why not combine it with chilling darkness and give curses a new adapt trait? If i recall correctly this was mentioned somewhere in the necro subforum and i did quite like the idea. But it then could be quite strong for a minor trait…

Muchacho.2390:

About shievers of dread, why not combine it with chilling darkness and give curses a new adapt trait? If i recall correctly this was mentioned somewhere in the necro subforum and i did quite like the idea. But it then could be quite strong for a minor trait…

Well, I wouldn’t argue that current chilling darkness is particularly strong, as it only procs once on any of our blind applications, which you rarely have more than 2-3 of without taking Well of Garbage.

Bhawb.7408:

Well of Garbage.

I haven’t read it all yet but I just had to highlight this because it made me chuckle.

The whole state of WoD drives me nuts. I know there are so so many other things that need to be fixed with Necromancer but Well Of Darkness bugs me the most. The cooldown seriously needs to be halved.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

The whole state of WoD drives me nuts. I know there are so so many other things that need to be fixed with Necromancer but Well Of Darkness bugs me the most. The cooldown seriously needs to be halved.

I’m planning to write another one of these but for base Necromancer soon. But this was like, a fraction of the effort that would be.

I like a lot of the things you’re saying, and agree with most of your points about Reaper shroud. I would prefer to see skill #2, as suggested elsewhere, become a channel the Reaper can end prematurely so the skillshot aspect of it remains the same but you can still avoid the overshot, as I enjoy this feature and find it essential to balancing the large damage pay off. I agree that skill #5 is excellent, but its targeting needs to be improved, as it seems unable to deal with moving targets at all. Its slow wind up time gives a player plenty of time to escape with a skill or dodge. Simply stepping slowly to one side shouldn’t be sufficient.

The issues with maintaining chill on your target via the greatsword, as you described it, also presents issues on multiple fronts. Not only can you not keep up with most foes, but you cannot maintain the 15% damage reduction that seems to be essential to keeping the Reaper alive for any amount of time. As I described in my own review, the Reaper drops faster with Valk and Soldier ammies than my powermancer does with Marauder simply because of the positioning demands of melee.

Only other issue is that you didn’t seem to address the problem of life force generation on the greatsword. I don’t feel the life force generating traits will be sufficient, and this should simply be added to these skills themselves. It does not need to be equivalent to the dagger, but it should not rely totally upon landing GS skills 3 and 5, which are very unreliable in a PvP scenario in their present forms.

Good post, though. We’re generally in agreement about the directions this spec needs to be taken in. Thanks for sharing.

Jackalrat.5493:

I would prefer to see skill #2, as suggested elsewhere, become a channel the Reaper can end prematurely so the skillshot aspect of it remains the same but you can still avoid the overshot, as I enjoy this feature and find it essential to balancing the large damage pay off.

This also works, honestly either one would be sufficient, just some way to end early is fine by me.

Jackalrat.5493:

I agree that skill #5 is excellent, but its targeting needs to be improved, as it seems unable to deal with moving targets at all. Its slow wind up time gives a player plenty of time to escape with a skill or dodge. Simply stepping slowly to one side shouldn’t be sufficient.

100% agree, I had completely forgotten about that but wanted to add it. My suggestion is to allow the hitbox to be the entire field, instead of a very small area, making it fairly forgiving to aim/land, and forcing the enemy to actually dodge/get away/use defense to avoid it, instead of just walking like you said.

Jackalrat.5493:

Only other issue is that you didn’t seem to address the problem of life force generation on the greatsword. I don’t feel the life force generating traits will be sufficient, and this should simply be added to these skills themselves. It does not need to be equivalent to the dagger, but it should not rely totally upon landing GS skills 3 and 5, which are very unreliable in a PvP scenario in their present forms.

Thanks for bringing this up too, because it was another thing I wanted to add but forgot in the process of writing it. I absolutely agree, GS just doesn’t have reliable LF generation, and the little bit it does have basically relies on you hitting 3-5 people every time you use the fairly long CDs. I think LF on AA is really the solution, even if it is only a little bit, otherwise we’re going to go the route of Scepter, which would be a step backwards.

Jackalrat.5493:

Good post, though. We’re generally in agreement about the directions this spec needs to be taken in. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the feedback, you reminded me of two big issues I had forgotten to add.

I want to add a few things:

• Gravedigger: this skill just does not have enough damage. It needs to be stronger than dagger AA by a decent margin to make it worth it considering it is SO EASY to dodge. Currently dagger AA is more powerful… if a-net is afraid of high numbers, just reduce a bit the cast time and reduce a lot the after cast.
• Grasping Darkness: currently fails more often than succeed. Attack speed of the “projectile” needs to be increased.
• Are you sure about Trooper rune? I used it in WvW, and while I haven’t really checked, I felt that I was loosing conditions. Maybe someone around me cleansed me…
• Soul Eater: considering how slow the weapon is, a weak life steal is really a weird idea. I don’t know really what to have instead: nightfall removes one boon on each pulse from each enemy hit? I feel like reaper trait line lacks boon hate.
• Decimate Defenses: I think necro is already over the top in terms of crits. You can get 124% with 2 traits and fury without having crits on your gears. What about a damage modifier instead? 2% crit = 1% extra damage if you have no ferocity so change to “1% damage for each vuln”.

Silverkey.2078:

• Gravedigger: this skill just does not have enough damage. It needs to be stronger than dagger AA by a decent margin to make it worth it considering it is SO EASY to dodge. Currently dagger AA is more powerful… if a-net is afraid of high numbers, just reduce a bit the cast time and reduce a lot the after cast.

I disagree, especially if the Ice Field idea is taken. As long as it doesn’t totally get crapped on DPS wise (which it wouldn’t in either of my suggestions), the utility of chill would more than make up for a small DPS loss in anything except PvE.

Silverkey.2078:

• Grasping Darkness: currently fails more often than succeed. Attack speed of the “projectile” needs to be increased.

I honestly don’t think so, it is pretty fast. So long as it is decent to aim it works quite well, not all that slow, but still has counterplay.

Silverkey.2078:

• Are you sure about Trooper rune? I used it in WvW, and while I haven’t really checked, I felt that I was loosing conditions. Maybe someone around me cleansed me…

I was wrong, there was just a weird delay where the condition remains for a moment after the skill finishes that was messing me up during testing. Just checked again and you are correct, edited that out.

Silverkey.2078:

• Soul Eater: considering how slow the weapon is, a weak life steal is really a weird idea. I don’t know really what to have instead: nightfall removes one boon on each pulse from each enemy hit? I feel like reaper trait line lacks boon hate.

I wouldn’t forget the pretty heavy multi-hitting.
1 is 3 possible procs per hit
2 is 5 possible procs per use
3 is 6 procs per person hit, 18 per use (that’s 900 siphon potentially)
4 is 4 pulses which can each hit 5 people, up to 20 procs (1k siphon)
5 is up to 5 procs

Overall you can potentially get around 5 procs per second, and that isn’t factoring in any CDR from the skill. If they made the CDR better and made the changes I listed, especially to 1/3 (the ice field pulsing could siphon each pulse), it would be just fine, especially considering the stacking with other things.

Silverkey.2078:

• Decimate Defenses: I think necro is already over the top in terms of crits. You can get 124% with 2 traits and fury without having crits on your gears. What about a damage modifier instead? 2% crit = 1% extra damage if you have no ferocity so change to “1% damage for each vuln”.

Yes and no. In PvE Decimate might be over the top, but it allows soldier to regularly hit high crit chances in PvP, where fury won’t be common. It also allows for high crit chances outside of DS, which is also very nice; you can hit 100% crit chance in PvP outside of DS and without fury. I really like it as is.

I think we came to a lot of the same conclusions. Though personally I swing the balance hammer quite a bit harder. Mainly I’m trying to balance things internally, because as it stands I won’t be using either the utilities or the weapon the specialization provides. The higher opportunity costs of the GS balance out the target cap, and the highly situational scaling on the shouts means that I’ll be better off with something like wells, which do similar things but don’t scale down.

This is mostly a PVE perspective, BTW.

I do agree that Shivers of Dread is an odd case, because Fear is an odd case. The only builds that have any tangible amount of fear are terror specific builds, so really this trait is a QoL upgrade more than anything else. There is one combo I think this would work with, but even if Deathly Chill getting a significant buff I’m not sure the curses/soul reaping/reaper build will be worth it.

Great writeup. As a Guardian hammer fan, love the second suggestion for the AA. There’s a big, slow, attack chain that really feels like it has an impact.

My only other comment is that some of the great sword animations felt really strange to me and the feedback was lacking. This was especially true with Death Spiral. The sword kind of waves around I wasn’t sure where it was actually hitting.

The comparison with hammer Guardian seems relevant and highlights the problems with the Reaper very well. I love playing hammer Guardian in PvE. Greatsword on the Reaper feels like I’m face tanking like a hammer Guardian, but without the damage or the sustain. It just feels… unfair. Good, thorough write-up. Thanks.

1. Deathly Chill could instead do damage when your Conditions are cleansed/fade…
That would be more of Curse trait, however.

2. I’m thinking about some alternative concept for “Rise!” Minion. It would’ve been puurfect if that Minion had ranged attack which Chills, IMO.
Again, synergy.

3. The idea with Invuln on shout… I’d keep it with Block, but extend the duration or reduce the cooldown. I think it having some counterplay instead of “k m8, now kite for 4s” is more interesting for both sides.

Wish I could actually test the Reaper for myself, but that’s some basic feedback I can provide without going deep into gameplay.

Rym.1469:

3. The idea with Invuln on shout… I’d keep it with Block, but extend the duration or reduce the cooldown. I think it having some counterplay instead of “k m8, now kite for 4s” is more interesting for both sides.

Just a note, it isn’t true invuln, it reduces all damage taken to 0, but all conditions and CC effects still work as normal. So you’re still able to try to kite and CC the Reaper, but the Reaper can also chain it with stability. Honestly feel like the “k m8, now kite for 4s” is exactly what a horror theme goes for.

But I do get the idea, various kinds of damage negation could be used to tune it, I just wanted to enforce the idea of it being actual negation.

Nice post Bhawb. I agree with most parts, especially the shouts. They really need higher base values and lower scaling per target.
I can’t comment too much on the traits, as I didn’t have enough time to thoroughly test them (Weekend shifts ftl ), but your reasoning seems sound on most.

Bhawb.7408:

Greatsword
Dusk Strike/Fading Twilight/Chilling Scythe -

<snip>

Agreed with most things. I really like the comparison with Guardian hammer. Even though you can’t compare classes that easily in general; I think it shows that GS auto attack is lacking.

My biggest issue with the AA is the speed. Maybe it’s just having to get used to it or something, but between dodging, using skills and people simply stepping out of range; I hardly feel like I ever get to the heavily backloaded part of the GS AA.
Like you said, the reward at the end is currently insufficient.
I really like the ice field finisher, but I still think the AA needs some adjustment too. Simply getting the actual swingtimers that the tooltip states (0.75 -> 0.75 -> 1.0) would be a big upper.

Gravedigger – A strong damage skill in theory, the windup is equivalent to Executioner’s Strike, but the reward for hitting the skill is severely lacking comparatively. Also, the reset brings it to 1s CD, a really awkward timing. Essentially, even if you get the reset you can’t just cast it again, yet casting just about anything else also takes too long, so it doesn’t flow well. Just a full reset would work much nicer, allowing for “spam” in the rare situation it would be usable, and at least in PvE allowing for high DPS under 50%. This might require a longer base CD which I’d rather have, as it is extremely unlikely you’ll want to use it every 5s anyway.

This this this. I didn’t even snip this, because this is EXACTLY what I think about #2.
The reward for pressing it is insufficient.
The cast and aftercast are simply too long and the damage too low.
The 1s cooldown below 50% is extremely clunky because you simply can’t really get casts in between. So you’re either interrupting AA’s; or you’re pushing the cooldown back an extra 1-2 seconds making the reduction mostly irrelevant.

Death Spiral –
<snip>

I like this skill. But I do feel it’s rather easy to dodge and rather hard to hit all 5 targets unless they’re completely stacked.
The range is short, the cone is small (like 30 degrees or something), and it has a pretty long cast time. Those 3 together make it feel really clunky.
Either increase the range and cone a bit (300 range, 60 degrees) OR make the skill instant so it’s easier to land the hits when you see the mobs line up nicely.

Nightfall – Only change I’d like to see here is a QoL change so that the aftercast is removed, just let me cast and go.

This. Nothing more to add. I would like to see a range indicator or something too. Also does this effect slowly creep outwards like the animation, or does it instantly affect everyone in a 300 radius. If the former, that might prove to be a bit of a gameplay issue as we get some experience in.
Nightfall animation is seriously one of the best in the game though, together with RS animations.

Grasping Darkness – Another cool skill, only problem is it shoots straight out from your character which is an awful targetting mechanism for this type of skill. Just have it work like other skills. Otherwise its fine.

Agreed.

Bhawb.7408:

Life Rend/Life Slash/Life Reap – Overall great, not sure I’d change anything at this point. It deals a lot of damage when you get on a target, and the issue of sticking to a target is more related to the 2 skill.

A lot of Dmg ? Compared to Life Blasts the Dmg is really low, if you take into account that i have to be in melee range, balance between risk vs reward is not given.

Bhawb.7408:

Death’s Charge – Needs to function like a targeted leap

Very bad idea. Coming from a WvW perspective i used that skill numerous times to escape or for general mobility, very useful, please not more targeted stuff.

This is just my opinion but Necromancer could use another Fear, something like Fear Me!, to proc more interrupts and add to Terror damage. There is too little Fear access, considering Terror and the previous nerfs to Terrormancer that end up trimming condition damage dps. Rise! adds to condition damage but is rather weak. Almost everything about the Reaper line supports only power builds.

Deathly Chill needs to be more potent and it would be nice, imo, to scale damage off the condition damage statistic rather than have it do direct damage on chilled foes < 50% health.

Bhawb.7408:

Death’s Charge – Needs to function like a targeted leap

Very bad idea. Coming from a WvW perspective i used that skill numerous times to escape or for general mobility, very useful, please not more targeted stuff.

Agreed on this. A better solution might be to keep it like it currently is, but if it impacts with a target you stop and blind. (Plus add a range indicator like on FGS)
That way you keep the full mobility, but get a bit more control over it as well.

He means function like savage leap, not a ground target.

Nyth.3492:

Bhawb.7408:

Death’s Charge – Needs to function like a targeted leap

Very bad idea. Coming from a WvW perspective i used that skill numerous times to escape or for general mobility, very useful, please not more targeted stuff.

Agreed on this. A better solution might be to keep it like it currently is, but if it impacts with a target you stop and blind. (Plus add a range indicator like on FGS)
That way you keep the full mobility, but get a bit more control over it as well.[/quote]

I’d settle for if you have a target selected it “leaps” to said target to do it’s attack, if not, it functions as it does now; thus you get the best of both worlds. You can set auto target in options to refine this.

death’s charge is fine as is.. people just need to get used to it.. i can imagine people would complain more if they tried to use it as an escape only to have your character go flying towards your target instead.. which is what savage leap does.

Beyond the lack of raw damage for the cast times there is still a lack of sustain damage that should really be addressed. Much alike Guardian’s gaining increased damage while in symbols, perhaps there can be a similar trait for attacking child foes, or just adding steroids on skills.

Leaving a damaging Ice Field would be a nice touch and increasing damage against chilled foes should be tied in with Cold Shoulder instead of increasing Chill Duration (10% is meaningless when it is iterated in such small amounts).

Chilling Nova is a really cool trait but the cool-down is just really disappointing, it should be a continuous punishment for clumped up enemies, i.e. a reduced cd on hit.

Gravedigger is just poorly designed, the damage is mediocre, horrific cast times and an extremely obvious tell. Even with a reduced cast time and 100% CD reduction you would just look like a ballerina.

I was wow’d by the visuals of this class but it needs so much work.

Bhawb.7408:

Life Rend/Life Slash/Life Reap – Overall great, not sure I’d change anything at this point. It deals a lot of damage when you get on a target, and the issue of sticking to a target is more related to the 2 skill.

It does not deal a lot of damage, as a matter of fact it deals less DPS on a single target than the great sword chain. As long as it is untraited of that is, condi Dhuumfire have a perma uptime of at least 2600 burn and the potiential might/vuln generation can be quite strong. Damage needs to be incresed with 30% in order to get close to dagger DPS.

Bhawb.7408:

Dusk Strike/Fading Twilight/Chilling Scythe -snip-

Chill suggestions are nice, but even with your suggestions, I would never take it over dagger as, dagger deals 25% more dps (almost 40% with current numbers) and generates more LF. Also, if I remember correctly, the Guardian Hammer actualy has a 3.7 total cast, while the Reaper GS has 3 seconds.

Bhawb.7408:

Gravedigger -snip-

I feel like I can get behind this quite well, but damage needds a buff (like 50% more), because once again Dagger 1 spam deals more damage per second.

The problem with the entire Greatsword and Reapers shroud is that Dagger 1 spam beats it in damage and that the chill is so low that it’s redundant so it probably could be removed and none would notice it.

About Death’s Charge, was anyone able to claim an aura with it? I had almost no time with Reaper to see how RS worked with fields.

Bhawb.7408:

Reaper Shroud is proccing weapon swap, which is GREAT, please apply this to normal Death Shroud.

Do you really think this is great?

You would create conflicting icds if you are running 2 of the same swap sigils on each weapon set, which is actually quite common for a lot of necro builds, including the current “meta” cele signets with 2x Geomancy.

They could detach gravedigger from the global cooldown and make it a supplemental attack to the auto chain.

If instead of interrupting your auto attack you simply pressed it and it summoned a shadowy figure above you kind of like how Maul looks but a guy holding a sword. It then swiped down after a 1 second animation. Still easy to dodge and it wouldn’t interrupt your auto in any way.

You then rebalance it to just reduce its cooldown for X seconds for each target it hits.

I personally hate the weapon swap proc for RS. I’ve developed this technique when under focus fire from 2 or more players where, depending on circumstances, I leave shroud, weapon swap to staff (I frequently enter shroud not wielding staff; I know, strange considering the power buff) to trigger hydromancy to remove any blinds and then fear instantly so that I have a hope of using my heal skill at like 1k HP to survive for even longer on node.

It works very often.
It wouldn’t work if my hydromancy was on cooldown and I couldn’t get my fear off, though.

Reaper’s Onslaught:

I lvoe this trait, the reset is amazingly fun in wvw zerg fights. However, as you stated, I can’t see any difference in attack speed.

Comus.7365:

death’s charge is fine as is.. people just need to get used to it.. i can imagine people would complain more if they tried to use it as an escape only to have your character go flying towards your target instead.. which is what savage leap does.

So deselect your target if you’re going to run? This is how every other leap in the game works if you’re using it to escape.

I’d be much happier if I could hit a target with it that wasn’t exactly 600 units away.

Reaper’s Shroud is awesome, but greatsword is really terrible. In PvP, Dagger+Warhorn blows away the greatsword.
You are all Weaklings should NOT have a cast time! It’s terrible for a stun breaker.

Some builds work good until you face a DD ele! You can pretty much guess the rest of the story.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Comus.7365:

death’s charge is fine as is.. people just need to get used to it.. i can imagine people would complain more if they tried to use it as an escape only to have your character go flying towards your target instead.. which is what savage leap does.

So deselect your target if you’re going to run? This is how every other leap in the game works if you’re using it to escape.

I’d be much happier if I could hit a target with it that wasn’t exactly 600 units away.

that dont always work for me atleast. sometimes it goes after targets even if i have none selected.. so i try to use it to get some distance and it charges to something on my side instead or something slightly in front of me.

anyway i prefer death’s charge. i’d be fine with it being like warriors Gs3 though

Comus.7365:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Comus.7365:

death’s charge is fine as is.. people just need to get used to it.. i can imagine people would complain more if they tried to use it as an escape only to have your character go flying towards your target instead.. which is what savage leap does.

So deselect your target if you’re going to run? This is how every other leap in the game works if you’re using it to escape.

I’d be much happier if I could hit a target with it that wasn’t exactly 600 units away.

that dont always work for me atleast. sometimes it goes after targets even if i have none selected.. so i try to use it to get some distance and it charges to something on my side instead or something slightly in front of me.

this skill need’s to work like warrior sword

Very nice post Bhawb, well written, makes sense, and good points made.
+1

Brokensunday.4098:

Comus.7365:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Comus.7365:

death’s charge is fine as is.. people just need to get used to it.. i can imagine people would complain more if they tried to use it as an escape only to have your character go flying towards your target instead.. which is what savage leap does.

So deselect your target if you’re going to run? This is how every other leap in the game works if you’re using it to escape.

I’d be much happier if I could hit a target with it that wasn’t exactly 600 units away.

that dont always work for me atleast. sometimes it goes after targets even if i have none selected.. so i try to use it to get some distance and it charges to something on my side instead or something slightly in front of me.

this skill need’s to work like warrior sword

if it does it has to end with an explosion or something so that you actually get the damage on some foes else it’s just an overly flashy leap

Bhawb.7408:

Silverkey.2078:

• Gravedigger: this skill just does not have enough damage. It needs to be stronger than dagger AA by a decent margin to make it worth it considering it is SO EASY to dodge. Currently dagger AA is more powerful… if a-net is afraid of high numbers, just reduce a bit the cast time and reduce a lot the after cast.

I disagree, especially if the Ice Field idea is taken. As long as it doesn’t totally get crapped on DPS wise (which it wouldn’t in either of my suggestions), the utility of chill would more than make up for a small DPS loss in anything except PvE.

I think you are confusing with the AA. I’m speaking about the supposed executioner skill which is too weak to execute anything.

Silverkey.2078:

• Decimate Defenses: I think necro is already over the top in terms of crits. You can get 124% with 2 traits and fury without having crits on your gears. What about a damage modifier instead? 2% crit = 1% extra damage if you have no ferocity so change to “1% damage for each vuln”.

Yes and no. In PvE Decimate might be over the top, but it allows soldier to regularly hit high crit chances in PvP, where fury won’t be common. It also allows for high crit chances outside of DS, which is also very nice; you can hit 100% crit chance in PvP outside of DS and without fury. I really like it as is.

Necro needs badly damage multipliers in PvE. And if you run soldier’s amulet, 25% increased damage is exactly the same as 50% more crits. It is only for Valkyrie (or anything which does not have crits but have ferocity) that it is a bit weaker. But for berserker (PvE mostly), this would be a huge improvement. Maybe the best idea is to keep this trait, but change the one in shroud to be 25% increased damage while in DS. This way you can keep high crit everywhere but also high damage in shroud.

This is a great summary post, thank you for this. I will remark that a lot of the feelings you posted I would agree with in the context of PvP and WvW, but not necessarily in PvE. (NCSY is garbage in PvE, for instance) That said, I’ll definitely be incorporating this thread into my report that I’ll send sometime this week.

Your post Bhawb pretty much sums up my thoughts on Reaper as well, and I agree with just about everything, thanks for taking the time to write this feedback

I also agree with Silverkey on this point

Gravedigger: this skill just does not have enough damage. It needs to be stronger than dagger AA by a decent margin to make it worth it considering it is SO EASY to dodge. Currently dagger AA is more powerful

If the damage was increased, and the recharge returned to 100% upon hit on an enemy with 50% HP or less, I think this skill will be worth using as an execute.

Silverkey.2078:

Bhawb.7408:

Silverkey.2078:

• Gravedigger: this skill just does not have enough damage. It needs to be stronger than dagger AA by a decent margin to make it worth it considering it is SO EASY to dodge. Currently dagger AA is more powerful… if a-net is afraid of high numbers, just reduce a bit the cast time and reduce a lot the after cast.

I disagree, especially if the Ice Field idea is taken. As long as it doesn’t totally get crapped on DPS wise (which it wouldn’t in either of my suggestions), the utility of chill would more than make up for a small DPS loss in anything except PvE.

I think you are confusing with the AA. I’m speaking about the supposed executioner skill which is too weak to execute anything.

I think he means that the Ice Whirl Finisher that could come after the finishing Auto Attack Ice field should make up for the damage loss.

at work atm

but heres some ideas ill add

rs2: needs collison detection of players
more often than not I flew through players which distanced me from my tar.

Id like it to mimic many of the warrior charges.

CHILL
the reapers…… forte?
Give Shroud Knight immuntiy to the current chill nerf. This skill should be unique for the reaper as it as advertised, and as such, current chill mechanics should be negated for the class.
In fact change it from CHILL to Xchill to differentiate the reapers power.

Damage
GS ONLY and chill (renamed X chill IE Super Chill)

needs to be tuned upwards. I dont like the slowness in PVP; however, Ic ould live with it if the damage were much higher.

Good players will avoid the burst skills very easily; and as such, the reward for connecting needs to be…….. well…… rewarding?

1) increase all damage 25% 50% 75% for auto attack, followed by 75% increases to GS 2-5.

2)or— make GS auto attacks damage based on % health inversely- meaning the higher an opponents health, the less damage, but the lesser the health the higher damage.

IE 100% health GS does 10-15-20 base no weapon damage just the flat % damage
50% health GS does 15-20-25 base
25% health GS does 20-30-40 base

CHILL
this thing is just so bad for a class that was advertised to be the master of chill.
when traited and depnding on gear/spec— hitting for 120 to 350 is just a poorly designed concept.
this damage needs a 100% damage increase to be meaningful.

and lastly

Big. slow weapon thats melee based with light armor…..

Ok shroud knight also needs to offer +33% protection as wel as access to GS.

Ok Im done— thanks Bawb

I was about to write up a post about my reaper thoughts, but you nailed everything i was going to say, and you said it much better than I could. Great post.

Scary how similar some of the suggestions are to the pastebin i wrote. I was probably a bit more generous with buffing stuff but then i was primarily looking at PvE balance and closely commenting on damage numbers.

I really like your second suggestion for greatsword auto-attack. Didnt consider that for the chill duration problem.

Bhawb.7408:

Rym.1469:

3. The idea with Invuln on shout… I’d keep it with Block, but extend the duration or reduce the cooldown. I think it having some counterplay instead of “k m8, now kite for 4s” is more interesting for both sides.

Just a note, it isn’t true invuln, it reduces all damage taken to 0, but all conditions and CC effects still work as normal. So you’re still able to try to kite and CC the Reaper, but the Reaper can also chain it with stability. Honestly feel like the “k m8, now kite for 4s” is exactly what a horror theme goes for.

But I do get the idea, various kinds of damage negation could be used to tune it, I just wanted to enforce the idea of it being actual negation.

Uh, you’re right, I read it wrong.

Two more things I could maybe suggest:

1. Reaper Onslaught instead of resetting the cooldown of #2 RS on kill (which is imo…intriguing. Shouldn’t the #5 RS get reduced cooldown instead? I mean…it’s executioner…uh) could make RS #2 apply Chill to foes it passes through or something. Make it a skillshot if it has to go in straight line.

2. Shivers of the Dread…Uh, the second minor. Instead of proccing only on Fear, it could proc on all hard CCs Or on fears and Interruptions.

spoj.9672:

Scary how similar some of the suggestions are to the pastebin i wrote. I was probably a bit more generous with buffing stuff but then i was primarily looking at PvE balance and closely commenting on damage numbers.

I really like your second suggestion for greatsword auto-attack. Didnt consider that for the chill duration problem.

Could we get a link to that? I’m curious to see what numbers you came up with.

@Bhawb
What shape would the auto field be? Circular or rectangular?
Though I believe the field should last 2s and provide 3/4-1s of chill per second. Would allow permanent chill with enough duration. I also say the coeff should be around 0.6 or 0.7 per hit. In total the ability #1.3 would do a total of 2.3-2.5 or around a full dagger chain relatively. Same as guard hammer does. Also a 5 target cap on the field.

So instead of starting my own thread I thought I would throw some ideas in here.

GS 1 (aa) the final attack of this chain should cast chillblains. This does a bit of damage and also chills and poisons thus allowing synergy with traits that work with marks and also the new trait that lowers damage from poisoned foes.

GS 2 needs to go back to a full reset on targets below 50% health and the attack speed needs to be uped a tad.

I actually didn’t have issues with GS 3,4,5.

Reaper shroud is good but it did feel like it would decay faster than normal shroud and it feels like soul reaping becomes mandatory line to make reaper shroud work.

I feel that shouts need to be balanced around three targets. Three being optimal, less then three iffy to use, above three would be a gain and feel powerful. This would also apply to augery of death.

Chilling nova needs a lower icd or an icd per target.

As for traits in reaping line. Minor one should also give us a damage bonus vs chilled targets. Minor three the damage reduction should be changed to “when using a great sword”. The reason being I feel minor one does not add to the power of the spec unlike minors in the base necro and the damage reduction on minor three is key to US going into melee but is unreliable when coupled to chill.

Anyways that’s all I got right now, sorry for spelling or Grammer errors I’m writing this on my cell well on lunch at work.